Jermain Defoe is back. Not that it ever felt like he had really gone away. He went to Major League Soccer to try his luck at FC Toronto but it was not long before he was looking for a return home. In truth, Defoe has always been present in our minds during his unhappy Canadian gap year, a fixture in the gossip columns, seemingly destined to be linked with Harry Redknapp’s Queens Park Rangers for the rest of eternity.
Defoe, who signed a four-year contract worth £90,000 a week for Toronto last year, was too expensive for QPR and while Leicester City appeared to be leading the race of struggling clubs who at one point wanted him, it is Sunderland who have spluttered over the line in first place. And all they had to do was give a 32-year-old striker whose deadliest days are behind him a three-and-a-half year deal in the region of £70,000 a week. He may make his debut against a former club, Tottenham Hotspur, at White Hart Lane on Saturday.
If it smacks of desperation, it is probably because Sunderland are desperate. The Stadium of Light was not a happy place during Saturday’s limp 1-0 defeat against Liverpool – supporters can handle losing but they will never accept their team adopting the foetal position from the first whistle – and Gus Poyet is an increasingly unhappy manager, his exasperation growing each week. Something needs to be done to rectify the goalscoring problem that threatens to plunge them into the Championship.
Only Aston Villa have scored fewer goals than the 18 Sunderland have managed in 21 matches and it is not hard to see why Poyet’s side are a point above the relegation zone. Steven Fletcher and Adam Johnson are their joint top-scorers with four goals while Jordi Gómez, Sebastian Larsson, Jack Rodwell and Connor Wickham have scored twice.
When Poyet turned to his bench for someone to rescue the game against Liverpool he saw Danny Graham, a striker who has scored one Premier League goal in the past two years and whose loan spell at Hull City last season was ended three months early. Graham spent the second half of that campaign on loan at Middlesbrough, recently had a short spell at Wolverhampton Wanderers and his 13-minute cameo against Liverpool was his first in the league for Sunderland since the final day of the 2012-13 season.
It beggars belief, too, that Sunderland decided to pay AZ Alkmaar £6.5m for Jozy Altidore two summers ago. The American, who is heading to Toronto as part of the Defoe deal, has scored one league goal in the past two seasons.
Altidore seemed determined to defy mathematics by giving 110% whenever he was on the pitch but Sunderland need more than a limited trier and Defoe scored 124 Premier League goals for Portsmouth, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United.
Critics believe Altidore is an example of English scouting at its very worst. The counter to that argument, however, is that strikers from overseas leagues do not always adapt. Perhaps Andrej Kramaric will fire Leicester to safety but there are no guarantees.
Sunderland have gone down the safer route, trusting Defoe’s knowledge of the league will allow him to hit the ground running.
At his best Defoe terrorises opponents with his speed and movement, either when running at defenders and shifting the ball on to his right foot for angled drives into the far corner or when he is anticipating low crosses into the box. While the deal looks expensive now Sunderland will not care if Defoe keeps them in the Premier League.
Yet the concern is he no longer has that extra burst he requires to succeed at this level, even though he scored 11 goals in 16 matches for Toronto, and that Sunderland have spent too long watching videos of Defoe scoring goals for Tottenham five years ago. He was peripheral towards the end at White Hart Lane and his last truly prolific season was in 2009-10. Defoe scored 18 league goals that year but only 22 across the following three seasons.
Now he is joining a side of restricted creativity. Too many of Sunderland’s midfielders are functional scurriers and it is not obvious what they gained from selling Stéphane Sessègnon to West Bromwich Albion last season. Poyet must extract more from Johnson, Emmanuele Giaccherini and Ricky Álvarez, who has struggled for fitness since joining on loan from Internazionale last summer.
A prosaic 4-3-3 formation does not help and Poyet could do with a rethink. Defoe is a straightforward No9 who likes to play through the middle. His size means he is not suited to playing on his own, he will not play with his back to goal or as a wide forward and Sunderland must work out how to play him into areas where he is effective.
The temptation is to say, with extreme caution, that signing Defoe can work in the short term but it would be a mistake for Sunderland to expect him to perform miracles on his own. In their position, though, it is a necessary gamble, even for that much money.
